Tag: upgrade

I upgraded my Mac Pro to High Sierra. For the most part it was seamless. The installer automatically migrated the HFS+ file system to AFPS and everything appeared to be working great. As it turns out. . . I have a new intermittent problem that causes the computer to become unresponsive while idle.

It presents primarily as a failure to wake from sleep (backlit black screens instead). Display sleep is actually all that is required to present and of course it is not every time. It is often enough for me to return to the 90s habit of shutting down my computer after I finish using it lest I cause irreparable harm to my mounted file systems. Here are some things i have discovered while trying to resolve. Sometimes i can access the computer remotely, other times not, never graphically. Sometimes the system hangs as soon as it goes idle, sometimes it continues to operate. Sometimes it restarts from “sudo reboot” from an ssh session, other times it just hangs completely when i try. The console logs are useless. Nothing at all before the reboot. When unresponsive, there is nothing to do but hold the power button.

The difficulty i am having at discovering the core of the issue combined with the fact that my remote backup has gotten stale is driving me crazy. There seems to be people complaining about this on every Apple forum there is. I am not alone:

looking good with exciting new Control Center and loads of other features. my favorite is 5x sleep to disable touch ID (instantly and temporarily). I am looking forward to the new Augmented Reality features built into ARkit. I cannot wait to see what developers do with it.

There are a few sticky wickets (i.e. Apple changed the bluetooth and wifi toggle functionality in Control Center). For example, if you “turn off” wifi it actually just disassociates you from your current network leaving your wifi radio on and functioning. i don’t mind because i wanted exactly this feature. if you actually want to turn off a radio, you need to go to your Settings app or turn on Airplane mode.

Apple maps is stepping up their game with indoor maps of malls, airports and others allowing navigation without GPS or even a view of the sky. Easy trick to share your complex wifi password with other apple devices and of course native animated GIF support!

For years now I have been terrified of one particular network device. This high end device requires a service contract from it’s manufacturer to be eligible for software upgrades and as such had been neglected for some time. I couldn’t use it the way I wanted or hardly at all for fear that it would be compromised via the Heartbleed vulnerability. Forced to relegate this amazing appliance to be firewalled far from the prying packets of the Internet at large.

Finally, with some licensing help from a friend, it’s firmware is finally current! It can once again take it’s place as the core of my network without the fear of being instantly owned. Thank you Adam once again for all your help. Let this be a lesson to hardware venders. Don’t force people to pay service contracts just for security upgrades. Your bugs, your job to fix.

Apparently, apple offered optional SSDs at the time of purchase, but the space and sata ports are available in all 2011 iMacs. You will need some custom cables and a bracket (or double stick tape) to complete the install. It is also a pain in the ass (requires a full Logic Board removal) to run the cable to the board. Not recommended for novices, but its incredibly cool to have both the speed of SSD and the capacity of a mechanical drive, all inside the iMac.

Turns out the hard drive I thought was due to fail, had actually failed. The nice thing is that I wanted to rebuild it anyway and I will never have to open this Mini again. Maxed the RAM and installed a SSD drive.